Archives - October 2008

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Jo Walton, Half a Crown: I found this a very satisfying conclusion to the Small Change trilogy (earlier books Farthing and Ha'penny), set in an alternate timeline wherein England made peace with Hitler and slid slowly into fascism itself. Now it's 1960, and former Inspector Carmichael is now the head of the Gestapo-like Watch (after having been blackmailed into compliance), while his ward Elvira Royston prepares to make her debut with the traditional presentation to the Queen.

Some (including Publishers Weekly) have called the book's ending unduly optimistic, but I thought it worked very well. Yes, it's hopeful, but the hope only comes about after much grief and loss suffered by the characters, so it feels believable and earned. Plus, I really liked the unexpected way Walton chose to carry out the ending.
Terry Pratchett, Nation: This is certainly the darkest Pratchett I've read...but also one of the best. It takes place not in Discworld, but in a world not too unlike our own, where England rules over a large Empire, including most of the Great Pelagic Ocean, where Mau lives on a small island with his family and the other people of the Nation. After a catastrophic tidal wave sweeps his village, only Mau is left...until the arrival of Daphne, sole survivor of an English ship and daughter to the heir to the English throne. Together, they must pick up the pieces of Mau's island, learn to reconcile their very different cultures, and figure out what they truly believe in the face of death, disaster, and discovery.

Pratchett goes deep into his characters' hearts to grapple with difficult questions, but he never lets his story get weighed down by them; there are always hope and humor, and also pigs and parrots (lest we forget this is Pratchett). I think that Pratchett's young adult novels have been some of his best work, and Nation is no exception.
Kate Thompson, The Beguilers: Rilka lives in a small village, where it isn't safe to go out after dark lest the beguilers lure you away, and where odd creatures called chuffies absorb human emotions, ridding the villagers of their negative feelings. Rilka has always been a misfit, and when she decides to try to catch a beguiler, she becomes an outcast. Though she does discover an astonishing truth about her world, her journey is mostly a coming-of-age tale, showing how she grows and changes as she copes with her difficult path.

I figured out the central mystery before she did, but not far enough ahead that I got impatient, fortunately. The pacing is generally good and suspenseful, though I thought Rilka was overly given to long self-analysis in a way that didn't always blend well with the narrative. Also, the ending felt rushed; the implications of what Rilka reveals to the rest of the villagers aren't fully addressed, and given the importance of her discovery, I'd have liked to see that explored more. Still, Rilka is a well-developed, interesting character, and I liked the small-scale (what lies beyond the village?) but convincing worldbuilding.
John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale: Scalzi retells the events of The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoe Boutin Perry, who is John and Jane Perry's adopted daughter and near-goddess to the alien Obin (who were given consciousness by Zoe's real father). Since much of The Last Colony, especially the ending (which was on the deus ex machina side), depends on Zoe's actions and choices, it seems reasonable to retell from her perspective. Scalzi does a reasonably good job telling a complementary story without repeating too much, though I think I'm glad I read The Last Colony last year -- otherwise, it might indeed have been too repetitive and predictable. Zoe's voice and her teenage friends are well done, believably precocious, yet adolescently impulsive. I still don't buy the ending, which is just too easy, but I buy it a little more with the extra explanation than I did in The Last Colony. I do wonder if the two books would have been better as one more cohesive one, with alternating POVs from John and Zoe.
Ellen Wood, East Lynne: When her father dies leaving only debts behind, Lady Isabel Vane marries the good-looking, hard-working lawyer Archibald Carlyle; when she becomes foolishly jealous of him, she runs off with a scapegrace aristocrat, abandoning husband, children, and respectability. This bestselling Victorian sensation novel is too long, awkwardly written, and overly moralizing, but I found it compellingly readable regardless. It's mostly a sensation novel, anyway, full of death, desertion, adultery, and disguise, as any good sensation novel ought to be, though in an unusually domestic, village setting. I did get tired of Wood's moralizing and addressing the reader directly with dire warnings of the fate lying in wait for wives who do not toe the line; on the other hand, she does sort of backwardly show by this the restrictions her characters must live under and create sympathy for them thereby. Generally, I'd take Wilkie Collins any day, or Mary Elizabeth Braddon, but I did enjoy this and found it hard to put down at night (and equally hard to pick up -- it's heavy!).
Laura Hicks, ed., for Girls Gone By Publishing, Celebrating Antonia Forest: Girls Gone By Publishing, who have been republishing Antonia Forest's books for several years, organized a conference in 2006 in Bournemouth on her work. This is an edited collection of the papers read there and of other Forest-related materials. The papers are of varying interest -- I especially liked those by Sheena Wilkinson on friendship, by Victor Watson on whether Forest is a "classic author", and Susan Hall on Nicola as reader, while being a little bored by those on Forest in Bournemouth and the place of the Royal Navy in her work (not caring very much what Commander Marlow's career path might have been). The highlight for me was clearly the large wodges of text Forest cut from Run Away Home, her last book, which include some fascinating insights into Karen and Edwin's relationship and an intriguing meeting between Nicola and Patrick.
Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World: This is a gripping account of the 1854 London cholera epidemic and how a physician and a curate investigated and discovered its cause. I very much liked the cross-disciplinary approach Johnson uses, exploring social history, epidemiology, city planning, and even the nature of scientific inquiry itself in his evocation of the epidemic and its world and era. I was less entranced with the last chapter, in which Johnson tries, not always convincingly, to relate the lessons learned in 1854 with lessons we should learn today about urban living, but on the whole, this was a fascinating book.
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle: In Dick's alternate 1962, Germany and Japan won World War II and have occupied the United States jointly, with the Germans controlling the East Coast and the Japanese the West. The eponymous "man in the high castle", author Hawthorne Abendsen, has written a seditious book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, describing what would have happened if the Allies had won the war, and Dick brilliantly uses this as well as the I Ching to illuminate and crystallize his characters' thoughts and feelings about their reality. He follows various characters through various conflicts, and though there isn't a lot of action, and nothing is really resolved at the end, that's not the point: it's really about the inner lives of the novel's people, and their individual responses to their world.

(I am vastly amused by the Kirkus review reprinted on Amazon.com: "How did the author turn this projected cosmos into a hinterland where only confusion and boredom reside for the reader? The Man in the High Castle is overpeopled, spattered with telegraphic dialogue simply absurd (A Japanese suicide says to his Colt .22 "Cough up arcane secret".) Finally, there is riddled throughout a quasi-mystique, a pseudo-religious leitmotif relating to an Eastern machine that answers questions when asked. This one could be pushed solely on subject-matter. But it will disappoint greatly." That reviewer obviously was expecting a totally different kind of book, weren't they?)
Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head: I liked this a lot. The plot was less convoluted than usual, which is nice; I thought the setting, a small oceanside town, was nicely done; and I really liked the main romance (okay, maybe because it's between two appealingly bookish people). I thought McKillip handled nicely the interweaving of the stories, between present-day Sealey Head and the mysterious world inside Aislinn House. I did think she made the main characters a little passive at the end, just sitting there waiting to find out what would happen in the other world, which dimmed my enjoyment of the ending. But I'll definitely buy it in paperback, which I don't always do with McKillip.
Nancy Farmer, The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm: This has been sitting on my to-read shelf for a while, and it shouldn't have, because it's one of the best young adult novels I've read in a while. It's set in Zimbabwe in 2194, where the three children of the powerful General Matsika are forbidden to leave their home for fear of kidnapping. Longing to experience the outside world, the three children figure out how to get out...and disappear. Their parents call in an unusual set of detectives, three people whose unusual physical characteristics have been produced by exposure to nuclear waste. They are the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, and they pursue the children from the crowded marketplace through the toxic waste dump called Dead Man's Vlei to the seemingly safe suburbs and the Mile-High MacIlwaine Hotel.

Farmer mixes African folklore and tradition with a futuristic environment to create something simply fantastic. The children, brought up in restricted safety, learn about the old culture of Zimbabwe and the new culture; I particularly liked how they see the English residents as strange outsiders. The pacing is excellent, as Farmer cuts back and forth between the kids and the detectives, keeping the tension and the interest level high in both threads until they finally meet in the book's climax. And I really loved the characters, who are portrayed both sympathetically and wittily; the bizarrely talented detectives particularly could easily be over the top, but they're just as human as anyone in the book.
Sarah Beth Durst, Into the Wild: Julie lives with the Wild under her bed -- the Wild, where fairy tales live, full of wolves, witches, and wishes. Her mother is Rapunzel, who long ago led an escape from the Wild, so that now Julie's town is populated with former fairy tale characters. When the Wild takes over the town and catches Julie's mother, her witch grandmother, and her adopted brother Puss-in-Boots, Julie must enter the Wild and use all she knows about fairy tales to save them...and herself. I like the concept here, and Durst mixes together fairy tale elements in a fun way, but it all felt a little on the light side. I wanted the danger to be more dangerous, I guess, and the dark side more thoroughly explored. (Okay, yes, I've listened to Into the Woods too many times, probably.) Still, I had fun reading Into the Wild, and I'll read the sequel and see if it delves a little deeper.
Laura Kinsale, The Prince of Midnight: When Lady Leigh Strachan journeys to France disguised as a boy in search of the famous highwayman the Prince of Midnight (really the reclusive S.T. Maitland), she gets more than she bargained for when she convinces him to help her get vengeance for the death of her family. Alas, this one didn't really work for me. I was never quite convinced by the relationship between the hero and heroine, the cult plot was just too bizarre, and the ending was much too drawn out, with a series of misunderstandings and an inability to communicate which got frustrating really quickly. I do wonder if the cult was really less believable than the plot of other Kinsales, or whether I'm simply more willing to accept cracktastic plots if I love the main characters. It's almost certainly the latter, given how much I like Seize the Fire and The Shadow and the Star, which have plots just as improbable if not more so than The Prince of Midnight. I'll probably read it again, but it's certainly not a top-rank Kinsale for me.
Gillian Bradshaw, The Sun's Bride: Isokrates is helmsman of the Rhodian warship Atalanta, which encounters pirates off the Lycian coast during a training voyage. When they rescue a beautiful musician, Dionysia, who proves to be the ex-mistress of King Antiochos of the Seleucid Empire, Isokrates, his master Aristomachos, Dionysia, and the city of Rhodes are plunged into a world of intrigue and warfare between the three Hellenistic empires. It's reasonably entertaining, and I liked the naval bits, but like most of her more recent work (with the exception of Dark North which I liked quite a bit), it's simply not up to earlier novels like The Beacon at Alexandria or The Sand-Reckoner. For one thing, it's quite short and doesn't give enough room to go into anything in-depth; the characters are engaging but don't linger in my mind, and the plot is overly simple, when there should have been lots of room for more complexity. It's a shame, because she's chosen an interesting time period not often written about in historical fiction, but I really wish she'd give herself more scope.
Kristin Cashore, Graceling: In Katsa's world, a few people have exceptional talents, called Graces. Gracelings are marked by different-colored eyes, and they are set apart from normal people, feared and often outcast. Katsa's particular Grace is fighting, which she discovered at an early age when she accidentally killed someone she thought was threatening her. Since then, her uncle, King Randa, has used her as a weapon, until Katsa meets another Graced fighter, Prince Po, and finally rebels against her uncle's rule. With Po, she sets out to solve a mystery and rid the kingdoms of a mysterious enemy with a dangerous Grace of his own.

This is an impressive first novel. There are some minor weaknesses -- the naming is uninspired (especially of the kingdoms: Wester, Estill, Nander, Sunder, and the Middluns?), the middle of the book is a little slow, and the origins of the villain are insufficiently explained for my tastes. But the worldbuilding and the characterization more than make up for small infelicities. The concept of Graces is intriguing, and I like how Cashore balances their talents by making it hard for them to get along in society. Katsa particularly could easily have been a super-powerful, beautiful-eyed Mary Sue, but instead, she struggles with her gifts, working out significant challenges. I loved Po too, but I was happy that he remained a supporting character, leaving Katsa very much in charge of her own fate and story.

(Upon checking out Cashore's blog, I find that a prequel is in the works which will explain the origins of Graceling's villain. This is good to hear, though I still feel that a little more explanation in the first book would have been a good thing.)
Patrice Kindl, Lost in the Labyrinth: Princess Xenodice belongs to the royal family of Crete. Her parents are King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, her older sister is Ariadne, and her younger brother Asterius, half-man and half-bull, lives in the center of the Labyrinth, where Xenodice visits him often. She also loves to visit the inventor Daedalus and his dreamy son Icarus, whom she loves. When the Athenian Theseus arrives as part of that year's tribute, Ariadne falls in love with him, and Xenodice must figure out how to navigate the maze of loyalties and protect her family.

My only cavil is that I found the tone a little too distant. Since it's in the first person, I wanted gentle Xenodice to show a little more emotion at times when shattering things are happening to her and her family. Still, Kindl does a lovely job weaving together myth, history, and archaeological discoveries to produce a convincing version of Cretan society. I particularly liked how she believably makes it matriarchal, with Pasiphae the real ruler, and how she turns on its head the usual Theseus as hero vs. the Minotaur as savage beast conception.
Justine Larbalestier, How to Ditch Your Fairy: Here in New Avalon, most people have a personal fairy: a clothes-shopping fairy, a loose-change-finding fairy, a good-hair fairy. Charlie, unfortunately, has a parking fairy, and since she's not old enough to drive, it doesn't do her a lot of good, plus the school bully is constantly bugging her (and even kidnapping her) to help him find parking. So Charlie tries to get rid of her fairy, which gets her into a lot more trouble than she'd ever thought.

This is only my own undoubtedly idiosyncratic reaction, but I disliked the world so much that I couldn't enjoy the book, even though the personal fairy idea is a great one. New Avalon is a shallow, materialistic, self-centered place, and the people in it generally are too. I hated the idea of specialized high schools (Charlie's is for sports, her sister's for the arts) where every single lesson has to do with the school specialty, including having classes in public relations and the like. I don't think Larbalestier is necessarily presenting the setting in an approving light, but since it's so clearly flawed, it was frustrating not to have that examined (other than by an occasional comment from a character who comes from another city). Also, Charlie doesn't really learn anything from her experiences; well, she does on the surface, but it does feel very surface-y and as though she'll simply revert to her old self easily. On the other hand, the book is getting generally very good reviews, so maybe you'd better take mine with a grain of salt.
Amy Stewart, From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden I first read this years ago from the library and recently got myself a copy from Bookmooch. I was very pleased to see that I hadn't forgotten what a lovely book it is. Stewart and her husband move into a small house in Santa Cruz with a small garden. A gardening novice, Stewart immediately becomes entranced with gardening, and she tells the story of how she learned to make and keep a garden in a humorous and charming style. She's also very good on the joys and hardships (tourists!) of living in a beachside town, though the garden story is always the star. I see that she's published a couple more gardening books since this one; I'll have to look them up.:


Last updated 2 February 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.